Lost in Translation

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Everything you heard is true.

By Andy Patrizio

Two simple decisions by Sofia Coppola make Lost in Translation work so well. One, she doesn't take the predictable route of having stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson bouncing on top of each other, and two, she sets it in Tokyo, which is quite possibly the most crowded lonely place for a westerner you can find.

Most of the credit, though, belongs to its two stars, taking two characters that should be totally foreign to them and making them come to life. It's one of those movies where, once it ends, you want to know how things turned out for them, even though they were just characters.

The Movie

The premise is simple enough. A washed-up actor in Japan to shoot a whiskey commercial runs into the lonely young wife of a photographer in their hotel and a bond forms. They are simply two people in desperate need for someone to talk to, isolated in one of the most congested cities in the world yet totally alone.

Murray's Bob Harris is at his end, in too many ways. His best days as an actor are behind him, at least when it comes to demand. As Murray is showing us with this movie, your best work can be your most recent despite your age. His wife badgers him via fax, cell phone and FedEx boxes. Now he's in a foreign country pimping whiskey when he'd rather be home working.

Charlotte (Johansson) isn't faring much better. While her life isn't at a dead end, she has no forward direction, either. She's graduated with a degree in philosophy (I could make a joke about how useful that is, but won't) and is married to John (Giovanni Ribisi), a go-go photographer who stops to talk to her only long enough to get new camera equipment before taking off on another shoot.

Whereas Bob has hit a wall, or a dead end, she has no gas to get off the staring line. Bored, she sits around her hotel room in her underwear (not that this is a bad thing), staring out at Tokyo.

The Lost in Translation DVD Menu.

If these two people didn't meet each other, we'd want them to. Their relationship remains platonic. As I said, turning it into a romance would have been too easy. What Bob seems to be doing is helping someone who needs it, and whom he can help.

In one of the most tender scenes, he carries an exhausted Charlotte back to her room after a night out and tucks her into bed before going to his room. It's more like a father putting his daughter to bed. Given their age differences, Murray could be Johansson's father.

He then goes to his room and calls his wife, who hangs up before he has a chance to say "I love you." You're left wondering why in the world he even gets on the plane home at the end.

How's this for the opening shot of the movie?

Coppola has either been to Japan several times, or has some very good friends who have, because she really nails the quirks of the country. There's a great scene involving Bob at a photoshoot, where the photographer talks for 30 seconds, and the translation turns into three words in English. He channel surfs through the bizarre TV shows in stunned disbelief. This familiarity only adds to the movie.

Lost in Translation requires some patience, as it doesn't take on the narrative of a typical movie. There's no larger plot point here. The time these two spend together is it. They have adventures and return to their separate rooms. It doesn't build to a slam-bang climax, they simply part, with Bill whispering something in her ear and Charlotte starting to sob and nod as he does. Again, credit goes to Coppola for not telling us what he said.

To be, or not to be...

For all the praise being heaped on Murray and Johansson for their performances, Anna Farris has been entirely overlooked for her hilarious supporting role as a Cameron Diaz-like vapid, airhead B-movie actress. I guess she was in one Scary Movie too many.

Score: 10 out of 10

THAT'S THE FACT, JACK!

The Video

Presented in 1.85: anamorphic widescreen, Lost in Translation looks pretty good for a movie made for $4 million. Then again, just being in Japan probably sucked up most of the costs.

The print is largely clean and free of any imperfections and grain is minimal except in some dark rooms. Unfortunately, there's a lot of them. Most of the hotel room scenes are dark, as are scenes in places like a karaoke bar and other clubs. There's a notable amount of grain here, but during brightly lit scenes or during a daylight shot, it's darn near perfect.

Black levels are excellent and solid, whites are free of moire errors. Tokyo is an extremely colorful city with all of its neon and all of the colors are rich and bright, with the reds free of any dot crawl. Edge enhancement is non-existent. All in all, excellent work.

Score: 9 out of 10

We'll always have Tokyo.

Languages and Audio

As soon as I saw the DTS option I knew there wouldn't be much for extras on this single-disc release. You have a choice of English Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS soundtracks or a French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, with English closed captions and French and Spanish subtitles.

This is something of an off-balance mix. The techno soundtrack pumps from the speakers and sound great, with excellent dynamic range from the high end down to some LFE action.

But when you have quiet moments, like Bob and Charlotte talking in their hotel room, they are almost unintelligible. It required turning the receiver up a bit to hear anything.

As you can imagine in a character-driven movie like this, it's mostly front-loaded with the center channel getting the bulk of the work. There were a few instances of positional audio which added a nice flavor. But the imbalance, with voices too soft and the music being so loud, hurts.

Score: 7 out of 10

And the toe bone's connected to, er, um...

Packaging and Extras

I rented the movie and Hollywood Video uses its own packaging, but there has been some complaining on the Insider boards about the locking clips on the side of the case. However, not everyone has this case, so it seems some units were shipped with it and some weren't.

As is Universal tradition, we have trailers in the beginning that can't be skipped, only fast forwarded through.

With a DTS track, it's not surprising there's no director's commentary. We do have a 30 minute track called "Lost" on Location, a documentary of sorts shot on handicam. I think Spike Jonze, Sofia's soon-to-be ex-husband, shot it, because early on she indicates toward the camera and says "this is my husband."

What he's really thinking is "Why did I have to forget my Viagra?"

Many of the players in the film, English and Japanese, talk to the camera about the shooting experience. The featurette runs through the shoot with producer Ross Katz doing most of the talking to the camera. It's full of Murray improvisation and goofing around.

Next up are five longer versions of scenes, running around ten minutes. The one they should have left in was the full press conference with Faris, who just nails the vapid Hollywood starlet persona. Once again I feel she was hosed. There's also Bob's appearance on a Japanese talk show with a bizarre Japanese host who comes off as a cross between Matthew Lesko and Steven Cojocaru.

First sushi, now this. Do they cook anything in this country?

After that comes a ten-minute conversation with Sofia and Bill in Rome. Filmed last October, Murray is now sporting a beard and both it and his hair are white, making him unrecognizable. Watch this and you'll see where she got the character Charlotte: her mirror. Supposedly, Charlotte's husband is based on Spike Jonze. If Spike had read this script, he might have saved his marriage.

Finally, there's a music video by Kevin Shields for the song "City Girl" and trailers for other movies by Focus Features, which produced the movie. There are no DVD-ROM features.